


Instead of Just Alone

by Mikkal



Series: Sleep Like Dead Men. Wake Like Dead Men. [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rotating POV, Westhallen is endgame, injuries, serious discussion of healthy relationships, unanswered questions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 20:21:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5062747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkal/pseuds/Mikkal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Things are getting a little better for #Team Flash. </p>
  <p>Because that's what they do, they move forward.</p>
  <p>Except something's always trying to push them back.</p>
</blockquote><p>A mass grave for the CCPD and an assignment for Iris from the CCPN. They can't possibly be related, can they? As Barry and Eddie investigate and Iris continues being awesome, a few heroes are popping up around the country, and they're not as unnoticeable as they might hope they are. And....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Instead of Just Alone

**Author's Note:**

> For hedgi, who's been having a rough time lately

**[[Instead of Just Alone]]**

 

Noelani angrily wipes at the sweat dripping down her face and increases her pace yet again. Her lungs burn, there’s a sharp stitch in her side. She really shouldn’t be running this late at night, she still has two papers to finish the drafts for and an ornate chest she hasn’t even started thinking about the design of yet despite the fact the designs are due tomorrow night. Writer’s block isn’t exactly her friend right now, well, it’s never been her friend, but it’s being particularly hateful right now.

            She comes around the bend in the park and her ankle suddenly gives, a sharp stabbing pain shooting up her leg. She stumbles, staggering to catch herself, then goes over the edge of a lip, tumbling down the small grassy incline.

            Sticks and rocks scrape her skin as she falls; her thigh hits a particularly large rock when she finally reaches relatively flat ground. Noelani swears, slamming a fist against the dirt and wills herself not to cry. She heaves herself up on her ass, curling her leg in and taking off her shoe and sock to get a look at her ankle. She swears again, louder and viciously, when it occurs to her that it’s too damn dark to see anything.

            She pulls out her phone and taps on the flashlight app, squinting in the suddenly bright light. She hems and haws at her already swollen, off-colored ankle. When she leans over for a closer look, her phone slips out of her shaking fingers.

            “God fucking damnit!”

            Noelani grabs her phone, but before she can go back to their ankle she catches sight of something strange sticking out of the dirt. She tries to pick it up, but it stays stubbornly there. She blinks and focuses the light and has to clamp a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.

            A finger. A fucking human finger.

            She shoves herself to her feet, scrambling away from the finger that is undoubtedly attached to something.  That’s when she notices the uneven oval of dirt, the way it’s piled up in certain places like shovel scoops, the way the oval is way too big for just one body.

            Noelani makes it to the edge of the pond before she throws up.

[…]

Eddie can’t help but laugh as Iris tugs him toward her childhood home, her cheeks flushed in excitement and a bounce in her step. His picks up the pace so he’s not slowing her down the slightest and they get to the front door in record time. She doesn’t even bother taking out her key, just jiggles the doorknob to make it unstick and bounds right into the foyer. Her cousin meets her not even half way and they both collide in a hug, almost toppling over.

            “Wally!”

            “Iris!”

            “Oh, I see how it is. No love for the aunt, huh?” Mary West pops up from the couch, grinning at her son and niece. She meets Eddie’s eyes and her smile gets a little wider. “I don’t think they’re separating any time soon.” She gets up and shakes his hand. “It’s so nice to meet you. Eddie, right? Eddie Thawne?”

            “It’s nice to meet you too, Iris has told me some pretty interesting stories.” He chuckles when there’s a flicker of exaggerated horror in her expression. “All good things, I promise. It made me want to meet you even more.”

            She cheers. “ _There’s_ the love for the aunt. Come here, you’re adorable.” Eddie finds himself being pulled into a tight hug and she kisses both of his cheeks in rapid succession, familial and very French-like. “Iris has told me much about you too.” There’s a twinkle in her eye that suddenly has him very uncomfortable, it’s the same look his grandmother gets when she’s about to ask him when is he going to ask Iris to marry him. Instead of asking him about it, though, she instead asks, “When’s Barry suppose to get here?”

            Joe checks his watch. “He should be here now.” He shakes his head. “He’s on call tonight so he’s probably doing paperwork to get ahead. Singh wants to hire a new forensic tech and he’s pushed the paperwork through Barry.”

            Eddie grimaces. He hates new hire paperwork, his old captain made him go through all the applications for new detectives for the narcotics division—punishment for his dad closing down that factory even though it’d been almost ten years at that point. Barry probably has it worse off since he’s effectively looking to hire a replacement for him for when that special metahuman department gets up and running.

            The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and there’s a small crash then the sound of Barry swearing. A grin fights for placement on his lips, warring against a worried frown. Barry’s been having trouble stopping lately, it started before their intervention, but it’s only gotten worse. It’s even weirder than it should be considering Barry’s been doing _better._ He has dinner twice a week with him and Iris, lunch with him and Joe every day except when he’s off then he has them with Linda. Once a week he goes out with Cisco, then Caitlin, then both of them. Then they all take at least once a week when all of them go out; sometimes some of Team Arrow comes down too.

            An entire month of this, he should be better now. Maybe not completely healed, but at least better than before.

            “Sorry I’m late!” Barry comes crashing in, nearly knocking over a vase. Eddie grabs him before he falls completely, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and yanking him close. “Singh dumped even more paperwork on me when I tried to leave.”

            Eddie doesn’t want to let go, this weird, somewhat childish thought that if he lets do then Barry’s just going to fade away. He just wants to hold on and keep him here. He pretends that it’s his imagination Barry seems to lean a little heavier against him, seeking closeness instead of comfort hopefully. Eddie glances up when Joe starts teasing Barry about the paperwork and catches Mary’s eyes. She’s going a strange expression on her face, the same one he’s seen on Linda’s face—especially after their first intervention.

            The look disappears when Mary throws her arms out wide and shouts, “Care-bear!”

            Barry laughs and detangles himself from Eddie (much to his disappointment) and launches himself into her arms. “Mary!”

            “Yay! More love for the aunt,” she crows. “This is how it’s suppose to work,” she says to the side at Wally and Iris.”

            Barry blinks when he notices them. “How long have they been like that?”

            “’bout five minutes or so,” Eddie answers with a smile. He gets a good look at Barry and is relieved to note that even though he had trouble stopping, his color is looking _a lot_ better.

            He laughs again, airy, light, and only a little controlled. If Eddie had known getting Joe’s sister and nephew here from Virginia would help Barry laugh like that he would’ve called up that side of the family a lot sooner. With that being said, he has no idea why they’re visiting right now.  It’s not a holiday and they were going to come for the Flash Appreciation day (it’s calling people nationwide), but this is a bit early.

            Iris and Wally finally part from their hug, smiling and bright eyed. Wally fist bumps Barry, both of them giving each other conspiring grins, and Iris hugs her aunt.

            “Okay, who’s hungry?” Wally’s hand goes straight up in the air. “Of course you are. We’re going out.”

            “I can’t help it, I’m a growing boy.”

            Iris loops her arm through Eddie’s and kisses him on the cheek then loops her other arm through Barry’s, giving him his own kiss on the cheek. Eddie catches the speculative look in Mary’s eye again as they head to the SUV Mary rented out and Joe’s car. Barry flushes pink and ducks his chin to his chest, glancing away from the both of them and asks Wally how his hiatus between high school and college is going.

            It’s not until they’re halfway through their meals that Wally brings the conversation back around to his schooling. What he tells them makes Iris squeal and wrap her arms around her cousin so tightly the white spots of vitiligo on his ear to his jawline turns a light pink.

            Wally is moving to Central City to attend the Central City University’s College of Science and Mathematics (the same one Barry went to) under the Cadmus Scholarship for Gifted Young Minds.

            “I’ll be moving back to Keystone in a year,” Mary says. “But Wally here is starting in the Fall in on-campus housing paid by the scholarship.”

            “What are you majoring in?” Iris asks. “Cadmus is all about genetics, but are studying anything specific?”

            Wally’s face lights up and he beams. “Neo-genetics.” At everyone’s confused expressions he just laughs before launching into an explanation. “Genetics is an old field and we’re constantly discovering new things everyday. There was, at one point, a genetic marker that was deemed ‘junk DNA,’ but now people are seeing it active more and more—sometimes even manifesting in mutations. Most of the people it manifests in were here, in Central when the STAR Labs particle accelerator blew. It opened a whole new world of genetics research. That’s the ‘neo’ part. We are so close to being able to screen for it for further testing.”

            The four Central City residents are stunned to silence as Marry smiles and proclaims her pride for her genius son. There’s a block sitting in Eddie’s stomach, heavy and foreboding. He reaches under the table and over Iris’ lap to grab Barry’s hand, tangling their fingers together. It’s an instinctual move and he half-expects Barry to pull away, but he doesn’t and even tightens his grip.

            They can’t confirm that this is the metagene Caitlin told them about, but it makes sense. It makes even more sense that people are actively studying it even before she figured it out considering they’ve been pretty wrapped up in the chaos of the last year. But the fact that they’re getting closer to being able to scan it during pre-natal tests and what happens then?

            It’s Barry that smiles brightly. “That’s amazing, Wally.” He pokes Joe in the shoulder with his free hand. “How does it feel to have a family full of geniuses?”

            Joe rolls his eyes, but his expression stays fond. Eddie feels so woefully small right now. He’s the only one out of the four of them (Wally, Iris, Barry, and him) who doesn’t have either a) more than one degree (Iris and Barry) or b) a degree in something that could literally change the way the scientific community thinks (Wally and Barry).

            He jumps a little when soft fingers wrap around his wrist, Iris presses her thumb on his pulse point and he sees her comforting smile from the corner of his eye. She leans over and kisses him on the cheek, shrugging her shoulders when Mary teasingly asked what that was all about.

            “You should talk to our friend Caitlin,” Barry says, taking his hand back to pick up his fork. Eddie feels the loss drastically for some reason. “She’s got a Ph.D. in bioengineering, but her undergrad was in genetics.”

            “Is that the doctor who helped you when you were in your coma?” Mary asked. “I think I met her once, not really one for small talk. I really enjoyed talking to Cisco though.”

            Joe laughs. “Don’t we all.”

            Their conversation goes to Mary’s social work and how she’s going to shift that over to Central when she moves and Joe’s hush-hush explanation of the new metahuman department that, really, Iris shouldn’t even know about (ha!) let alone Wally and Mary, but out of everything they can’t talk about, that’s the lowest priority.

            The happy dinner is interrupted by Joe’s phone ringing. He groans and answers it; already moving his napkin from his lap to his plate and getting that resigned look on his face. Well, that’s what they get for agreeing to be on call.

            “Yes, sir. We’ll be right there.” He shoves his phone back in his pocket. “I gave you the key to the house, right?” Mary nods. “It’s late already so I don’t know how late we’ll be, don’t wait up for me.” He kisses his sister’s cheek as he stands, grabbing his jacket. “Come on Thing 2 and Thing 3, we’ve got a case.”

            “I would’ve never guessed,” Eddie jokes. Iris rolls her eyes and kisses him before he goes.

            Barry groans. “I literally just away from them, you’re really making me to go back?” Eddie pulls him from his seat and loops their arms together, tugging him along.

            “What’s the case?”

            “A civilian found a dump site with ten bodies.”

            “Jesus,” Eddie mutters.

[…]

“I swear to God, Christophe. If you don’t puke on the other side of the tape I’m going to kill you.”

            Eddie looks away from getting Officer Kahananui’s statement to see one of Barry’s techs stumble away from the dump site to puke in the reeds. He hasn’t gotten up close and personal with the site yet, but even from here Eddie can smell the decomposition. He flips his notebook close and gives Kahananui a curt nod.

            “You know the drill,” Eddie says. “Come down to the station tomorrow morning for your official statement. I’ll type it up tonight. Nine should do. Bring your sister too for hers.” The poor woman had the unfortunate luck of stumbling over the site.

            “Thanks, Thawne.”

            He turns away and heads over to the shallow indentation in the earth. Techs still scramble to carefully unearth the bodies, swiping brushes over fingers and faces until they run into the problem of pieces of flesh coming off on to the bristles. Eddie gags at the sight and tries to breathe shallowly through his mouth.

            “That’s not going to work,” Barry says from his elbow, his worlds slightly muffled by the mask over his nose and mouth. “Here.”

            Eddie takes the extra mask gratefully and puts it in, breathing in the strong scent of lavender. He coughs, startled by how strong the lavender is—they must’ve opened a new box. “Thanks.”

            Barry’s eyes crinkle at the corners in a smile. “Before you ask: we’ve got nothing so far,” he starts when Joe joins them. “There are no visible causes of death. The M.E. did a cursory examination of two of the bodies we’ve pulled out and she didn’t find anything superficial. Of course, we’ll know more when we get them to her office and I can start running analysis of their blood for anything wonky and IDs. There’s no point in trying to get trace evidence. This area is heavily trafficked with the view and everything.” He nods towards the bench attached to a concrete base just outside the police tape. “And it rained just a few hours ago. That’s probably what unearthed the finger for Noelani Kahananui to accidently find.”

            “Do you think metahuman?” Joe asks. “Or do we finally have a normal person case?”

            Eddie barks out a laugh. “I don’t think there’s ever a ‘normal person’ case, metahuman or not.”

            “Point.”

            Barry sighs, shoulders heaving, and gestures for them to walk farther away. He pulls off the mask and Eddie nearly does the same before changing his mind. “Dr. Avery already classified it as a homicide, of course. But she’s dropping in one killer instead of multiple like the number of bodies suggests.” He glances back at the grave. “There’s a steady progression of decomposition from bottom to top and the fact there’s no visible signs of cause of death means they’re consistent. Multiple people aren’t consistent like that.”

            “Well, look at you, Detective Allen,” Joe teases him lightly. “Any chance at any prints or fibers on the bodies?”

            He shakes his head. “If they were wrapped in plastic maybe. But no. I got nothing until Dr. Avery sends me samples.” Barry groans. “Christophe, what the hell did I just say?” He goes running off to shove his tech under the tape, hovering over him as the other man pukes the remains of his stomach. He shoves a water bottle in his tech’s hands and a tissue pulled from his pocket.

            Joe sighs and runs a hand over his head. “Okay, you take a look at the security footage from the entrance to the park—.”

            “I don’t know how much that’s going to do,” Eddie says. “This park has frequent customers. Hell, you’ll see me and Iris on camera going back six months before everything when to crap. Barry started coming with us a few days ago, we’ve been here twice. It’s a popular dog park.” He jerks his thumb back at the German Shepard barking at them excitedly as its owner stops to gawk. “Kessler!” he snaps and the uniformed officer hurries to usher the patron away. “Without any evidence this case is probably going to turn cold real quick.”

            The older man sighs again. “Yeah. Worse part is: we disturbed the site and the media’s already swarmed.” As if cued for it a light flashes from a camera. Eddie’s only glad Iris isn’t here for once. “The guy’s not coming back here any time soon—if ever.”

 

[…]

Iris jumps when a file drops on her desk and her email pings with a newly arrived message at the same time. She glares up at her boss, but he only smiles.

            “Your new assignment,” Hunter says, leaning his hip on her desk and stretching his legs out. Once upon a time she would scoff at such an obvious display of flirting, but now she knows that bad weather makes his legs sore—he’s only been out of rehab and his wheelchair for a year. He continues talking as she starts to flip through the digital cop of the paper files, ignoring the folder he had dropped off. “You’re heading to Central City Hospital to interview the paramedics on their payroll. They’re the first responders to most CCPD calls for a bus.” Usually when CCPD calls for an ambulance, the Flash isn’t far behind or he’s already there.

            She hums absently. “Yeah, I’ve noticed.” For a while she thought they were up to something terrible—maybe some Munchausen Hero Homicide sort of thing—but it didn’t take her long before she realised they really just happened to have the worse shifts ever. “Just a small right up? Nothing special?”

            Hunter shakes his head. “That’s it. It’s gonna be a lead into the Flash Appreciation Day spread you’ve been working on.” He knocks a knuckle against the surface of her desk.  “Do you have any information about that mass body dump found last night? I heard Joe and Eddie are lead on the case.”

She shakes her head. “Other than the fact they haven’t gone home and it’s been nineteen hours since they were called in. Barry’s the lead CSI on the case too.”

Hunter whistles. “Damn. Okay then, I’ll leave you to it. Tell your boys I say hi when you see them.”

            Iris barely hears him as he walks away, a slight limp to his step with the storm on the way. There’s a few names on the paramedics list and she marks off the ones she definitely wants to talk to—Clive Yorkin, Halide Avci, and Rose Silverton. She remembers them from being front row seat to a few of the Flash’s heroic deeds, they were calm under pressure and talked to the Flash like he isn’t a metahuman who constantly saves lives, but just a regular guy.

            A shadow falls over her, but she doesn’t bother looking up, knowing Linda will say something or drop lunch in front of her. That woman spends way too much time here at CCPN, even on her days off. She works for a few more seconds before she freezes, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. She glances up to see Eddie smiling down at her, his expression fond and soft despite the lines of stress around his eyes.

            “Hi,” he says, just a hint of amusement in his tone.

            She grins. “Hey yourself. What’s with the creeper act?” She sets down her stylus and pulls her undivided attention to him. “You didn’t come home last night.”

            He pulls Bob’s chair over with an ankle and plops down. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. Singh forced me, Joe, and Barry to a twenty-four hour break. We can’t go back ‘til tomorrow. This case is going nowhere fast.”

            “Did Barry go home?” she asks.

            Eddie laughs. “Nah, he’s taking a nap in the car. I came by to see if you wanted to go to lunch.” He leans forward. “The best part? It was his idea.”

            Iris grins brightly at that and powers off her tablet. “In that case.” She shoves that and the paper folder into her bag—she still has no idea what’s up with Hunter’s obsession with paper—before she climbs to her feet, back cracking wonderfully. “Where are we going?”

            “Garrick’s.” He wraps his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close as they head out the building. She sends a quick text to Linda letting her know she’s not at Picture News anymore just in case she wanted to go to lunch.

            When they make it out of the building, Eddie steers her toward his car, but she hesitates. He glances back at her, eyebrows furrowed.

            “What is it?” he asks, instantly on alert.

            Iris glances around; catching the sight of someone throwing her friend a blue sports drink, and shakes her head. “Nothing. I thought I saw something.” The hair still stands on end, though, and she can’t shake this feeling. It’s the same feeling she got around the Reverse Flash and Barry when they use their speed. “Never mind.” She smiles at the sight of Barry cramped in the back seat, too tall to be comfortable, but heavily asleep either way. “Did you guys get _any_ sleep last night?”

            “I got a few power naps here and there,” Eddie says as he opens the door for her. “I think Barry got one or two, but he rushed a few tests with his speed and he didn’t eat much so he’s pretty out of it.”

            Iris frowns at Barry through her reflection. At least he took the initiative and decided on lunch instead of Eddie forcing him. She doesn’t quite understand what goes on in his mind. There’s literally nothing for Barry to feel so guilty about—no one died, amazingly enough. The list of those injured was extensive, but no one lost their lives. The amount of collapsed buildings (which are being rebuilt over night at amazing speeds, but it’s not like Iris can _sit_ on him at night) should indicate more causalities, but there aren’t.

            This guilt he’s carrying around—this undefined, _useless_ guilt—is damaging and she just wants to grab him by the shoulders and _shake_ him sometimes. Why did he have to be so self-sacrificing? What ever gave him the idea that he meant less than what he really means? What the hell gave him the idea that if anything happened to him, everyone else would be okay? That they’d just carry on like normal like there wasn’t this hole in their lives, their hearts?

            Eddie grabs her hand, squeezing it tight. “Penny for your thoughts?” he asks, his smile just a little bit cheeky.

            She rolls her eyes. “I’m just musing about Barry and the Singularity again.”

            The smile drops from his face. “You too? I don’t know. Something about it won’t leave me alone.” He glances back at Barry. “He’s not telling us something about it. I know that’s not a secret. But it’s almost literally eating away at him. I don’t like it.”

            “I told him to try,” she says. “And he is. There really isn’t anything more we can do than be here for him.” It’s like he’s grieving without actually verbalizing his grief. What is he grieving for? Lost buildings? A lost confession? She twists around and shakes Barry’s hip lightly, knowing full well he startles awake more often than not. “Barry,” she calls softly. “Wake up, we’re almost to Garrick’s.” Sure enough he jerks awake, hand flying out to smack against the back of Iris’ seat with a sickening smack. “Are you okay?”

            He groans, heaving himself up to a more comfortable position. “Yeah,” he croaks, rubbing his redden hand. “I’m fine. It’s probably just gonna bruise.” He blinks owlishly. “Oh. Hi, Iris. I didn’t know we picked you up already.”

            She laughs lightly. “Not only that, we’re almost at Garrick’s.” She wants to ask about the case, but she hold back. Barry’s got those same lines of stress around his eyes as Eddie does. Both of them are usually clean faced even after a hard day of metahumans and cases, but there are those certain times. “You’re not going to believe the assignment Hunter gave me,” she says instead. “It’s going with the Flash piece he’s having me do. At this rate I could just write a novel instead.”

            Barry ducks his head away from her, looking out the window, but Eddie says: “Why not?” She grins happily at him. “I mean, you’ve always talked about writing a crime novel, why not a book about the Flash from the Accelerator explosion to, well, whenever your publish it?”

            Iris hums at the idea, thinking it over. It wouldn’t take her away from Picture News too much if she wrote a book about the Flash, half her job is writing about the Flash and the other half is writing about the law enforcement that deals with him anyway. But of course… “I wouldn’t write it without Barry Okaying it. —Barry?”

            He’s picking at a hole in his pants—a new hole, Barry doesn’t go to work wearing ruined clothes—and not meeting her eye. “I’ll have to think about it,” he mumbles. “Uh, I’ll give you an answer later.”

            She nods. Fair enough, it’s his life she’d be writing about even if no one else knows that little fact. She’ll give it until Flash Appreciation Day in a couple of weeks before she bugs him about it again. It’s a spur of the moment thing, so she’ll think about it a little more. “Have you talked to Aunt Mary yet today?”

            Barry shakes his head. “Joe said he was heading back to the house and he’d talk to her then during lunch.” He runs a hand through his hair, grimacing. “Then he was going to crash.”

            “Is that your plan after this? Drop Barry at his apartment to sleep and you head home and sleep?” Iris asks. At Eddie’s nod she pulls out her phone. “Well, let me text Hunter and tell him I won’t be coming in for the rest of the day, I’ll pick up the hours later. I didn’t leave anything at work.” Barry tries to protest, but she cuts him off. “Hunter will understand, he use to work for the Keystone police, remember? They had that serial bomber a few years ago, the one that put him in the hospital.”

            Barry groans. “How could I forget? I got drafted onto that case. I had to deal with FBI agents commenting on how young I look that entire month. It was while you were in Gotham,” he answers Eddie’s confused look. What’s it called? Missed Connections?

            “No, I remember reading about it,” Eddie says. “And I got briefed on it when I transferred back, half the station was still blocked off, hazardous. I just didn’t realise you met Zoloman while you were there.”

            “Of course I did, he was lead detective before the Feds took over, then he was liaison between the two. I worked under their lead CSI—uh last name was, er, Kolins? Ashley Kolins, I think.”

            Iris shakes her head in fondness. How can Barry remember scientific facts at the drop at the hat, but names and social norms escape him? “Well, before we park and you can run away—Barry, you’re coming home with us after lunch.”

            “W-What?” Barry splutters. Out of the corner of her eyes she sees Eddie grin. “No, Iris. You don’t have—.”

            “Come on,” Iris says, waving away his protests yet again. “Your apartment is clear across town and it seems like you’d be losing out on precious sleep to drive you there, on both parties involved. Eddie would have to drive you there, then drive back, then sleep. You’d have to be driven there and then sleep. If we just drive to our apartment then you guys can get to sleep faster.” She nudges Eddie with her elbow. “Ain’t that right, babe?”

            “I’m in total agreement,” he says. “It’s not like it’ll be cramped,” he adds. “I live in Brookfield Heights, the Blüdhaven Condo.” Thank God he moved there after they moved in together. The original apartment complex he’d live in was still Brookfield Heights, but so _bachelor_.

            “Please, Barry,” she adds. If he’s truly against it, she’ll drop it. The more someone tries to force Barry to do something the less he wants to do it.

            He sighs, big and heaving, but his smile shows he’s not as annoyed as he’s pretending to be. “Okay, okay. Only if it’s not too much trouble on you.”

            She scoffs. “Of course not.”

[…]

He hates to admit this, but sometimes Cisco is lonely. He can’t figure out why most of the time, he has more friends now than he’s ever had before—he needs more two hands to count the people he is in contact regularly and semi-regularly with—but when Caitlin’s out with Ronnie, Ronnie’s only here long enough for a long sleep in a bed he knows and lunch with his wife, Barry’s at work, Eddie’s at work, Iris is at work, and Harrison Wells is not Harrison Wells _and_ gone, well—he get’s lonely.

            Especially in the Cortex of STAR Labs. This place use to be his home until his mentor—his father-figure—turns out to be a time travelling murderer and his home turned out to have more hidden secrets than would be comfortable.

            Which is why he’s focusing on the 3D printer finishing up the last touches of Barry’s new suit and the two different text conversations he’s having with Laurel and Felicity. Felicity keeps sending him SnapChats of the travels she and Oliver are taking—he’s pretty sure they’re in France right now—and Laurel is doing speech-to-text as she complains loudly about the criminals she’s fighting.

            [ _—I wouldn’t call it a fight, Vibe. It’s more of a ‘I watch them try to hit me and I’m literally just standing here.’ It’s so sad—_

_He doesn’t get to reply before there’s another one:_

_—When are you coming to visit? I mean, I know I’ll see you in a few weeks at the Flash Day thing, but that’s so far away—]_

He really should be trying to practice his powers. Between making almost every glass dish he owns shatter and having horrifying dreams about timelines and worlds that may or may not exist, he’s kind of too terrified to touch them with a ten-foot pole. Besides, he doesn’t have a starting point for this. He could talk to Hartley, since he’s got that obsession with sound waves, but telling that jerk that he’s a metahuman seems like a really bad idea.

            So, really. Caitlin helps a lot, but they’re drifting without Harrison Wells.

            The email account for STAR Labs beeps with an incoming message and he only reads the subject line before deleting. Another merger offer from Wayne Industries. Someone there isn’t doing their job properly if the Central City STAR Labs keeps getting their merger offers instead of the board of directors. He wonders who had been the one to convince Garrison Slate and Robert Meersman to put a STAR Labs in a city that had originally been slated for a Kord Industries factory—Harrison Wells or Eobard Thawne?

            He also kind of wonders when Slate and Meersman are going to finally shut this place down. They keep having the bill paid for lights and plumbing even though Central City is no longer making them money.

            “Cisco? You in here?”

            He glances back to see Linda swinging a take out bag from Olive Garden. He raises an eyebrow, that’s a far cry from the standard fast food. She’s dressed a little down today, hair in a loose ponytail and jeans and a tank top, a messenger bag slung over her shoulder.

            “There you are,” she says. “I have the day off and I already ran my errands. How ‘bout a fancy fake-Italian lunch without the hassle of trying to hear ourselves over the crowd?” She waggles the take out bag like he needs any encouragement.

            “Hell. Yes.” He rolls down to a part of the table that’s not covered in keyboards and monitors. “Did you go to the university today?” he asks, waving the receipt in the air. The address is for the Olive Garden in University Town and the Central City University is the only thing that part of the city has going for it.

            “Yeah. I’d sent a draft of my book to my old journalism professor a few months ago,” she answers, already ripping apart a breadstick. “We kept in touch after I finished her class. She sends me new articles about sports journalism and I send her drafts to proof read. She wanted to go over the edits in person.” With her cheeks bulging with food she lights up with a sudden thought. “And you’re never going to believe the guy I saw today.”

            He raises an eyebrow. “I thought you went in for edits?” he teases. “Not to guy-hunt?”

            She rolls her eyes and digs out her phone. “You’re so hilarious. No, seriously, check him out.” She scrolls through her photos and turns the phone to him.

            “Are you stalking him now?” he asks. Though the guy is really attractive, and he’s smiling straight at the camera so at least Cisco knows Linda asked for permission first. He’s got patches of vitiligo on his face, primarily on his jawline to his ear. “Did you talk to him? What’s his name?”

            “I did!” she says proudly. “His name’s Wally and he’s going to start attending the College of Sciences and Mathematics for a degree in neo-genetics.”

            “Holy crap, that’s some heavy shit right there.” How come he’s never heard of neo-genetics? It can be too new of a field if there’s already degrees for it. “Do you like him?”

            She laughs. “I can’t say for sure. The last time I crashed into someone like that our relationship faded before it even began. Granted, he doesn’t seem nearly as jumpy as Barry.” She laughs again and Cisco joins her, happy that the way that relationship ended didn’t ruin anything. “Enough about that, though. Have you done anything new with your powers yet? See any new timelines?”

            He shakes his head. “No. I just broke a light bulb this morning and I’ve still got the same two timelines going.” The one from when he died and the outcome from that and then the original timeline where Barry disappeared in 2024 and _that_ timeline’s outcome.

            Both of them are equally terrible, but he feels like he’s missing something—another timeline that flashes in his head, but he can’t quite pin it down.

            Linda _tsks_ at him. “Cisco, you know better than anyone that unchecked powers can be a bad thing. I know Barry’s still out of it, and he and Eddie are working on that mass murder/serial killer case and their stupid metahuman department, but you’ve got me, Caitlin, and Iris. We can help you, even if me and Iris are just cheering you on.”

            He sighs. “ _I know_. But I just. These timelines I keep seeing.” He stabs a piece of chicken in his pasta with more force than necessary. “They don’t go in order. Some times I see things that I know, the happier times, but then they jump to the times after the tragedy: I died, the city’s destroyed or Barry disappears and his Rogue Gallery takes over the city. It’s not even Captain Cold or Heatwave sort of Gallery, they just disappear quietly—but something else.”

            “What do you mean _something_ else?” she asks quietly, her eyes wide. “Not someone, something? You can’t tell what it is?”

            “No, I can’t.” He meets her eyes. “And that scares me.”

[…]

Honestly, Iris picks the perfect day to go to Central City Hospital. There haven’t been any big incidents that would cause all the paramedics to leave the building and the ER is quiet for once. She’s greeted by Dr. Cass Yorkin, sister to the paramedic Clive Yorkin, and is given a free pass to head to parts of the building patients aren’t allowed in. She’s shown the break room for the paramedics and she smiles at the ones lingering around.

            “You must be Iris West.” The woman’s uniform has ‘Avci’ stitched on the breast pocket and she’s smiling brightly when she shakes Iris’ hand. Her hijab is a pretty dark blue with a lavender pattern on the edges. “I’m Halide. I heard you wanted to talk to me, Clive, and Rose, right?”

            “Yeah,” she replies. Her stomach flutters with nerves. She always gets nervous about these sort of things. She got the job at Picture News because of her connection to the Flash, she was never suppose to be a ‘real’ reporter, but now she is and it’s one hell of a thing. “The three of you have spoken to the Flash face to face and I was hoping for some insight for a Flash piece Picture News is going for Flash Appreciation Day.”

            Her eyes light up. “Awesome! He’s great, really. I’m so glad we got him instead of the Arrow or the vigilante in Gotham.” She scratches her cheek. “Though, the Arrow hasn’t been seen in a while, has he? I guess the team there isn’t so bad. Hey, Rose!” she shouts. “What are the people in the Starling City team called?” The answered if muffled and Halide huffs. “Hold on,” she tells Iris, then she’s gone around the corner.

            “Give ‘em a minute,” a man leaning against a vending machine says. He’s got ‘Yorkin’ stitched to his uniform. “There’s a side room we can use for this. We know a little more about the Flash than most of our coworkers and some of it we don’t like them knowing.”

            Halide and the paramedic who must be Rose Silverton come back from around the corner, dressed out of their uniforms. Rose is a pretty red head with dark skin and bright blue eyes, a scatter of darker freckles are splashed on her face, neck, and shoulders like an artist wanted to create the milky way on her skin. Halide is darker, her makeup done perfectly in a way that has Iris jealous, and her eyes are as dark as the night sky, reflecting lights like they’re stars. Really, Iris never thought people that pretty existed. She and Halide are leaning against each other, their hand tangled together.

            “Black Canary, Red Arrow, Guardian, and Arsenal,” Iris says. “That’s the Starling team. The internet calls them Team Arrow.”

            Rose wrinkles her nose. “Even with the Arrow gone? Lame.” She gestures for Iris to follow them and she does, Clive not too far behind.

            The rooms is plain, a microwave and a fridge and a table with a few chairs are the only things in it, and it doesn’t look as used as the main locker room. Iris lets the paramedics take a seat before she even bothers taking out her tablet and taking her own.

            “How much do you know about the Flash?” Halide asks immediately. “I mean. I know you’ve been writing about him since before he went by the Flash. I followed your blog.”

            “I know as much as you do, probably,” Iris lies. “I’ve had a few face to face meetings with him. I have a friend who kept up with strange and impossible things so we were some of his go-to people for histories of phenomenon. He’s a nice guy, overly heroic.”

            Clive snorts. “How can someone be overly heroic?”

            Back before Iris knew _things_ , she thought the same thing. Now she knows what lengths Barry will go to keep people safe, even at the cost of himself. “I’ve see the Flash run into a building caught on fire and seconds away from collapsing to save a kid’s stuffed animal.”

            Halide chuckles. “Tell me about it.” She waves her hand to encompass all three of them. “We’ve all treated wounds that I’d rather not see again. I’ve never been so grateful for fast healing.” She fingers her cheek bone. “No matter what, he wouldn’t let me take off the mask.”

            Rose groans. “Don’t get me started on the mask. B was such a baby about it. No matter how many head wounds he had, he’d never let me take it off.”

            Iris startles. “’B?’” What the hell?

            “Yeah,” Clive says. “After the first dozen encounters when he first showed up he started brushing off the whole Flash thing and told us to call him B. It definitely made it easier to talk to him. He acted like such a normal dude, not like he had super speed and constantly saved lives.”

            “We still don’t know much about him,” Halide assures her, like she can see the panic on Iris’ face. “He kept his face covered. Even the times when he passed out we never took it off. There’s something _wrong_ about taking that mask off when it’s not willingly done. He only told us to call him B, told us that he has a family he loves, and sometimes there was something there—” She closes her eyes before she meets Iris’ wide eyed look. “Does he really have someone taking care of him? He’s not alone, is he?”

            Iris sucks in a breath. “No,” she says. “He’s not alone.” She sighs. “Let’s go through some of the calls you’ve gotten than involves the Flash. I have it on record so let’s just have a conversation about it.”

            “Sounds good to me,” Clive said. “I’m still on shift, so I might get called out, but I’ll stay as long as possible.”

[…]

“Thawne, sorry, but a body’s been found,” Saab says, breaking Eddie’s thought processes. “It matches the bodies you found a few days ago in the mass grave.”

            Eddie groans and drops his head to his desk with a thunk. “We don’t have any leads, why, why is there a body now? Just one?”

            “Just one,” Saab confirms. “Allen’s waiting for outside.” He tosses a notebook on the desk, an address written on it. “Sorry, man.”

            He grabs his jacket and Joe before heading out. Barry’s leaning against the brick wall with a paper in his hand.

            “What’s that?”

            Barry’s head jerks up, eyes wide. “Oh, uh. The fliers for the Flash Appreciation Day made their first print.” He holds it out for Eddie. “Who ever designed it did a really great job.”

            Eddie takes it, smiling at the lightning strike at the top of the page. “Have you decided on if you’re going yet?”

            “…Where’s the crime scene?”

            Joe snorts at the less than subtle steering away from the question, but Eddie doesn’t say anything. He’s getting tired of letting Barry get away with his conversation changes and not actually answering any of the questions that need to be answered. Mainly:

            _Are you okay?_

But he doesn’t want to lose these two steps forward to take five steps back.

“Let’s go, Thing 2, Thing 3,” Joe urges, making his way to his unmarked car.

            Eddie watches Barry go, following slowly behind him.

 

            [“ _What the hell is that?” Joe shouts, his voice lost in the roaring wind._

_Iris’ grip on Eddie’s arm in cripplingly tight and he struggles to breathe, a brick laying on his chest and pressing down with a pressure that has his vision going dark. He presses his fingers over his heart and pulls them away, expecting them to be dripping only for them to come back covered in dust._

_The portal to the past contracts, shrinks, before it’s blowing bigger, a flash of blinding blue and white light. Eobard laughs, maniacal, hysterical. Then suddenly, he’s gone. Just_ gone. _Barry’s left behind, panting, crying._

_“Barry, what happened?”_

_He’s dazed, staggering around. His eyes meet Eddie’s head on, tears dripping down his face. There’s a split in his lip, in his eyebrow, a bruise around his throat. “I don’t know,” he croaks out, not taking his eyes off Eddie, trailing down his face to stare at his chest. Eddie resists the urge to cross his arms in front of him, Stein’s coincidence speech still running through his mind._

_“I don’t know.”_

_He’s_ lying.]

 

Eddie grabs at Barry’s elbow before he can get into the car. “Barry—“ he starts, but faced with those green, green eyes he loses his words. They’re finally getting back to normal (and beyond) and he can’t bring himself to ruin it by bringing up memories. Yeah, Barry seems to constantly think about it, but it’s a sort of faded memory that just holds on in the back of his instead of in the forefront of his mind. He can’t bring that out, not now. Maybe not ever.

“Eddie?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

[…]

Iris starts with transcribing the meeting with the paramedics. Clive Yorkin had to leave close to the end, a call about a car accident the Flash had also made an appearance at (everyone turned out all right), but Halide and Rose were willing to tell her a few more stories.

            She knows about most of them, the social media sites following the Flash are a wealth of information and Barry’s told her about some of them now that they’re all talking again. It’s nice to get the point of view from someone who doesn’t know Barry’s the Flash. Even though her knowing is a recent thing, her being in the loop has clouded her views of things from before.

            Iris taps her pen against her lip before she goes into the hospital records for a list of those saved by the paramedics. There’s a lot of names on there. She feels a swell of pride for people she barely knows. Heroes come in all shape and sizes. She clicks ‘next page,’ but that brings her to the deceased list. She frowns. No, okay, she doesn’t want to be here.

            Involuntarily, her eyes scan the names for a quick second. Just before she goes back, she spots a familiar name. She opens a new window and pulls up the news article with the list of names of those found in the mass grave a few days ago. They were released this morning with permission from the next of kin.

            _Aragon, Cristóvão._

_Grant-Kim, Carrie._

_Hylton, Tilden._

_Jameson, Celso._

_Kelly, Mila._

_Moore, Julie._

_Smith, Thomas._

_Tate, Ylva._

_Williams, Grace._

_Williams, Steve._

            Ten names of those dead on both lists. They were all patients of Central City Hospital, first in the ER then eventually moved to the ICU. All of them. What the hell?

            She pulls out her phone and call’s Eddie’s number, letting it ring. “Hey,” she says when he picks. “What’s the name of the victim found yesterday?”

            “Uh, Amelia Hunt,” he answers, his voice sounding far away. “Why, what’s up?”

            She scans the list again and finds _Hunt, Amelia_ before _Hylton, Tilden_ on the list of those who died in the hospital.

            “Did you find the Central City Hospital connection yet?” she asks.

            “Actually, yeah,” he says. “Barry found it about a half an hour ago. We’re running that lead down. You’re noticing the part that doesn’t make sense, right?”

            She scoffs. “What do you take me for? Of course I did. How did eleven people who died in a hospital with doctors and legalities surround them end up in a mass grave and an alley? That makes the part about there not being Missing Persons reports make more sense though.”

            “That and the fact that every single next of kin for these people no longer live in the state,” Eddie says. “They moved after their loved ones died, ranging from a month to a year after. They would’ve have seen the report of the released the names since it was on a local station. They have no reason to believe their loved ones aren’t where they were laid to rest.”

            “So, now the mystery is how do bodies go from a hospital to their grave to their mass grave?”

            “Iris,” Eddie says, his voice low in warning. “I’m usually okay with you investigating things on your own, even against metahumans. But this guy’s killed eleven people and there’s absolutely no evidence. Please don’t.”

            “I have access to the hospital for three more days,” she protests. “I can ask to look at their records.”

            “Iris, please!”

            “This has to be a metahuman,” she continues. “There’s no other way. If you’re so worried about me, take comfort that all I’m doing is looking for information and if someone gets suspicious, I already have a cover for me through Picture News. It’ll be fine!”

            He sighs. “Fine, but I’m not the one who’s going to tell Barry that this could be a metahuman and you’re going out on your own. You have your gun right?”

            “I do,” she confirms. “It’s going to be fine, babe. I promise.”

            “Be careful. I love you.”

            She smiles. “I love you too.”

            After they hang up she grabs her pass from the hospital and stuffs her tablet back into her purse. It’s true she has a gun and she’s had a concealed weapons permit for a while now, back when she had her first real encounter with a metahuman—damn Tony Woodward— but she hasn’t used it anywhere but the gun range to brush up her skills. The idea of using it against anyone leaving, whether they’re a criminal or not, makes her shudder.

            Maybe her dad taking being a police officer off the table was a good idea. But at the same time she’s still pretty pissed at him for that whole thing.

            It takes her a simple ten minutes to make it to the hospital and Dr. Yorkin greets her with a wide smile.

            “Iris! Thank you for the heads up call. How’s the article going? Do you need to talk to my brother and company again? This is their day off.”

            She shakes her head. “Actually. I was wondering if I could get a little more information about the people they saved? I, of course, don’t need to see their files, but I was wondering if information like how long they were here, the extent of their injuries, and what not, is available to me? I want to show how hard these people work in tandem with the Flash.”

            Dr. Yorkin hesitates, so Iris squares her shoulders and looks as determined as possible. She runs a hand through her graying hair (something Iris files away for later for some reason). “Okay, okay. This isn’t something I’d normally do, but considering why you’re asking and since you come with glowing recommendations, I’ll let you see some files. Come on.”

            “Thank you so much!” she says brightly and follows Dr. Yorkin into a sparsely decorated office—either someone’s moving in, or they’re moving out.

            “Since you’re only interviewing three of my paramedics, I can only let you see the files for those three. I’ll go grab them now.”

            Iris watches the good doctor go before clearing the desk off to set up a station. She pulls out her paper and pen notebook and her tablet, activating her app that lets her use a stylus to write then put it through as text. Dr. Yorkin comes back a few minutes later with a cart with three box files, looking worn out.

            “Are you okay?” she can’t help but ask the older woman.

            Yorkin blinks, like she just realized Iris is there. “What? —Oh, yes. I’m fine. I recently had a resident transfer to Coast City, one of my mental health professionals transfer to Arkham Asylum,  and two paramedics quit, citing that the job is more dangerous than their contracts called for with the metahumans around. I’m doing interviews to fill those positions today.” She glances at her watch. “In fact, I’ve got an interview in five minutes. You’ll be okay here? I’ll send someone back in a a few hours before Dr. Franklin is suppose to finish moving her stuff in.”

            Iris smiles again. “That sounds perfect. Thank you so much again.”

            She shakes Dr. Yorkin’s hand before the woman rushes out of the room. Iris takes her seat and cracks her knuckles before getting to work. It’s interesting in the long run to see how their files are set up and she rips up some paper to black out personal information before taking a picture. She doesn’t want to take a picture of it then edit it because the original might be somewhere in the cloud or her OneDrive and she doesn’t want that information getting out somehow.

            But if she has a format record then she’d be able to tell if things have been altered or if something’s fake on other files down the road. Sometimes the weirdest things are the most useful.

            She goes through Rose Silverton’s file, then Halide Avci’s. Of course, it’s not until she gets to the last file box an hour later—Clive Yorkin’s—that she hits the jackpot. Each name on her list of the dead matches with eleven names on Clive’s patient intake for the ER and triage for in-field medical assistance before they were brought to the hospital.

            Iris texts Eddie the name, including Cleo Yorkin’s name because she’s pretty sure Clive and Cleo are twins even though Cleo _looks_ older. They’re not suspicious at all minus the eleven names. Clive gave no indication in their group interview he was something less/more than a regular ol’ human and Dr. Yorkin just seems like an overworked hospital supervisor thrown into a situation with people with most-of-the-time-uncontrollable powers.

            _—I’ll run it through. Thanks. <3—_

— _Oh. Do you mind stopping by STAR? Cait did a 2 nd opinion on the bodies and Singh said it’s ok for you to pick up the results since we’re suspecting metas and you’re one of the experts—_

She grins. Oh that’s nice, being one the ‘experts.’

            Iris sends a quick text agreeing to run the errand then packs up her mess. She carefully puts the papers back in their respected files, brushes her impromptu black out slips of paper into the trash, and makes sure to save everything to her OneDrive.

            She has information about the Flash and some of their team’s activities, but she has an entirely separate storage system for that. For some reason her paranoia is in full force with things like that.

            The file boxes are a little heavy, but she manages to stack them on the cart before taking her leave. She glances both ways down the hallway, checking for Clive or Cleo Yorkin. If either of them are the metahuman responsible for this she wouldn’t put it past them to start suspecting her and attack her in someway.

            But the hallway is empty.

 [...]

“Do you want to tell me why my daughter’s investigating a serial killer, possible metahuman, on her own?”

            Eddie grimaces and glances up. “I tried to stop her,” he offers weakly.

            Joe snorts. “I doubt you tried very hard.”

            He can’t help but scowl a little. “Why would I? She can make her own decisions.” Not ever a second after finishing that does Eddie realize _how_ he said it—not _what_ , but how. His eyes widen and he does his best to shrink back in his seat. He’s not too afraid of the other man, but he is the father of the woman he’s dating and the man he’s slowly being to have more feelings for (which couldn’t come at a worse time to be honest).

            Joe stares at him for a long, dangerous moment. “You bought her a gun, didn’t you?”

            Eddie can’t help but chuckle. “She bough herself a gun after the whole Tony Woodward thing. You know, when she punched out a metahuman all on her own, saving the Flash at the same time?”

            “She’s my little girl, Thawne,” Joe says. “She can’t be going this.

            Eddie tries really hard not to seem amused by it. “I’m sorry, Joe. I respect you and everything, but Iris is a grown ass adult. She pays taxes, she lives on her own.” –-or the equivalent— “She can make her own decisions. If they end up being a mistake, well, isn’t the saying ‘lean from your mistakes?’ She does better when she knows what’s going on, she knows what’s she’s trying to protect herself from. Didn’t she talk to you about all of this? She told me she did back when Grodd was a thing.” _Back when he was held captive by his maniacal, murdering great-grandson times whatever and didn’t know when the nightmare would end._

Sometimes, just sometimes, when Iris wakes up from a nightmare she doesn’t remember, or he gets a good look at the emptiness in Barry’s expression, or when he remembers Cisco before he became withdrawn—sometimes he wonders if the horror story is still going.

            Joe scowls darkly, but Eddie can tell right away it’s not at him. He knows that as a father Joe has every right to be worried about Iris, but, at the same time, as her boyfriend, Eddie does too—forget the whole ‘his vote matters when he becomes her husband’ bullshit, his vote matters when Iris wants it to matter in things that directly influence her—and he knows that Iris would prefer to _know_ and kelp out than be kept in that dark or the sidelines, watching her friends and family slowly fall to pieces when she could’ve been doing something to help. He can’t keep things from her and he can’t keep her from doing the things she wants to do. She knows how to protect herself and he will always be there when she needs it.

            Even Barry didn’t let her alone when he was avoiding all of them for those months, he was there if she went out and did dangerous things, but only as a backup she never ended up needing. He didn’t even bother hiding himself properly, Iris knew he was there the whole time. That was probably the point.

            Joe finally sighs. “She’s my little girl, Eddie,” he repeats, sounding lost. “If I can’t protect her from the metahumans, what _can_ I protect her from? They have so many different powers and they can do so many different things. I’m waiting for the day one of them can blend into the shadows and can be everywhere and nowhere at once. I can’t protect her from that.”

            “Let her protect herself,” Eddie offers, even though he knows it won’t work. Even Barry wouldn’t be able to protect himself from that. Ronnie might, being the whole fire equals light sort of thing. “She won’t be alone. Me and Barry? We’ll be there every step of the way. You just have to trust us. Joe raises an eyebrow that had Eddie’s insides squirming. “What?”

            “Nothing.” He drags a hand over his face, heaving a deep sigh. “The three of you are going to be the death of me. From Iris throwing herself into dangerous situations, to Barry still slowly killing himself, and you trying to keep them all on their feet with rousing speeches and earnest do-good attitude, I’m going to go gray long before I planned on it.”

            “’Do-good?’” Eddie asks, half-insulted. “What’s that suppose to mean?”

            Joe laughs. “Nothing,” he repeats. “It just means you’re a good kid. I’m glad you stuck around.”

            Eddie’s heart swells at that and he can’t help but smile brightly. “Out of curiosity: what made you change your mind about me? Before you hated the idea of me in Iris’ life and you’d rather have Barry there instead, but now…? You call me Thing 3.”

            For the longest time that had been a West-Allen family thing. Then, suddenly, a week after the Singularity Even, Joe out of the blue calls him Thing 3 and Eddie had to scramble to catch up. It’s a ridiculous thing, but it made him feel _liked_ and _welcomed_ and _included_ —he’s not included very much—and all those good feelings even more so when Barry had been around for the first ‘Thing 2, Thing 3, let’s go’ at the stations and he hadn’t even blinked.

            Joe looks uncomfortable for a split second. “You want to know something? I have no idea. I realized I’ve been treating you unfairly ever since you and Iris actually told me about your relationship, and I will be completely honest in saying that I had been hoping for Barry to get his head out of his ass and ask her out, but…Eddie, you’re a good guy and a great detective. I will always love Barry, but Iris did a fantastic job when she agreed to go out for coffee with you that first time, and second time, and third time.”

            Eddie’s face grows warm. Okay, he hadn’t been expecting that. He’s glad Joe’s changed his mind because of Eddie, not because Iris—or even Barry after they got past their whole ‘love triangle, let me hate you because you’re dating the person I love’ thing—had forced him to play nice.

            This is a legitimate thing. Something that might stick, because Eddie’s not being scared away by the byline of a newspaper from the future this time.

            —Does that thing still exist with everything’s that’s happened? Does the Gideon AI still exist? He’ll have to ask the STAR Labs crew about it. It wouldn’t be weird if they both disappeared. For something that created a black hole through time and space, the Singularity didn’t change much in their world— _such_ a melodramatic reaction for nothing.

            “Thank you,” is all Eddie can say, at a loss for anything else.

            He doesn’t tell him about their plans for Barry. Nothing’s set in stone yet, but he’s hopeful.

            “Thawne, West,” Singh shouts, interrupting the happy feelings. “Get in here. I need an update about the mass grave case.” The media has yet to attach a name to it and the police never like putting their own spin on it. “Also, Saab, you’ve got their bookstore robbery case. I need this one solved _today_.”

            Eddie makes an apologetic face at Saab, but the name just waves it away with a good natured smile. He will always be glad his co-workers stopped calling him Detective Pretty Boy and actually started taking him seriously as a cop. At this point he only lets Iris get away with calling him that, and sometimes Barry when the other man is in the mood to be teasing.

            A rare feat these days.

            God, he just wants this case to be _over._

 […]

It’s become a habit to show up at Barry’s apartment even though Iris knows he’s spending more time there now. She knocks this time and waits for an answers—the last time she just walked in like normal Barry had been home and Iris got an eyeful of Barry Allen out of the shower and only wearing a pair of jeans hanging loose around his hips. If she ignores the fact that he’s _too_ skinny, her face still heats up at the memory. The lightning strike did wonders for his physique though she knows some of that’s from before because even though he’s a nerd, he never let himself be weak no matter what he says in argument.

            She has to admit that even since he announced his deep feelings for her back during Christmas, Iris has been looking at Barry a lot differently. She can’t help but wonder about that other kind of love for him other than a best friend—just because they grew up together never meant she saw him as a brother, they were too old when he first moved in and it just never occurred to her to think of him as a brother. She loves Eddie with all her heart and she’d be more conflicted if Eddie hadn’t already said something at New Year’s about their relationship—

            That’s not something here or there.

            There’s no answer after about a minute or so, so she goes ahead and unlocks the door to let herself in. She kind of glad Barry never questioned where she or anyone else got the extra key from and she’s going to pretend they never did something illegal and/or violating by copying the extra key he gave her dad for emergencies. She does feel a little guilty sometimes when she thinks about them all trampling over his apartment and going through his fridge, but then she remembers how little he seems to care about himself anymore and she stomps down hard over that guilt.

            If he doesn’t/didn’t like it, he should have no problem telling them so. She and him never had a problem with telling each other stuff like that before—the Flash and the love thing not withstanding.

            The apartment is cleaner than last time she was here and the lights in the living room are on. She drops her bag near the door and steps lightly farther into the room. There’s a new addition to the use-to-be-blank walls: a corkboard with papers and photos already on it. For a moment she fears Barry’s fallen back to his obsession about his mom’s murder—something that is, and this might sound harsh, but it’s pointless now. Nora’s killer is _gone_ and he’s nowhere to be seen.

            But the photos and papers on the corkboard aren’t about his mom. They’re newspaper clippings of incidents in other cities that people are citing as superheroes or vigilantes. Gotham City on the northeast coast, Metropolis in Kansas, Coast City in California, Dakota City in Nebraska, and so many more. They’re rumors now, experiments and shadows, but they’re there.

With those newspapers there’s photos of her, Eddie, her dad, Caitlin, Cisco, Linda, Bette, Laurel, Thea, Dig, Ray, Roy, Oliver, Felicity—and her postcards she keeps sending, the most recent being one from Spain and an attached photo of rolling hills she’s seen in Barry’s stuff of his mom. That had been Nora’s favorite place in Spain and she knows Barry had been at least once before she was killed.

She drags her finger across the newspaper announcing the first report of a Flash Appreciation Day in the works. It’s turning into a weekend, traveling fairs taking advantage of the influx of people and, in turn, the city is taking advantage of those and the Fourth of July weekend. People saved by the Flash have been doing interviews nonstop and it’s only by the grace of Hunter that she doesn’t have more on her plate than her Flash spread for the CCPN.

There’s a _thump!_ and a shout from Barry’s bedroom and she goes running. Iris knocks her hip against the couch and has to scramble to catch herself before she goes crashing. She grips the doorframe to Barry’s room tightly in one hand, holding herself up, and she watches Barry attempt to untangle himself from his sheets.

It’s not until he doesn’t free him for a full minute does she realize he’s still asleep and still in the throes of a nightmare. His face is pinched and shiny with sweat and tears. He murmurs something under his breath that she can’t make out fully but she does hear ‘ _Eddie_ …’ and ‘ _Ronni_ e…’

“Barry,” she calls softly. He doesn’t even react. When she said he wanted him to sleep more, it never occurred to her he’d have nightmares—maybe about his mom and Eobard Thawne, but not of…of _Eddie and Ronnie_? “Barry, wake up. You’re okay. Everyone’s okay.” She wants to go over there and shake him awake, but she holds back.

Now she wonders if he really did sleep at her and Eddie’s apartment the other day, or did he keep himself awake so they wouldn’t be _bothered_ by his nightmares?

Iris opens her mouth to call his name again when he suddenly jerks then stiffens, a gasp escaping then a sob. Their eyes meet for a split second, both of them close to tears, before Barry throws an arm over his face and the knuckles of his opposite hand against his mouth to muffle a sob.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly, inching into the room. “I assumed you weren’t here when you didn’t answer the door.”

Barry waves away her apologies. “If I hadn’t ignored you guys for so long you wouldn’t be in the habit of checking up on my apartment.”

“True.” She sits on his bed, his hip dipping toward her. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He grimaces. “Not really… Not right now at least.” His smile his wobbly, but it’s a smile nonetheless. He pats her leg. “You wanna order take out? Call Eddie if he’s available?”

Iris holds back a sigh, but grateful that he says ‘not right now’ instead of a subtle ‘never.’ “Sure, why not? You want to call for food or do you want to call Eddie? I’m good either way.”

“I can call for food,” he answers, heaving himself up and wiping his face with the hem of his shirt. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen.” He stands, fiddling with his shirt before he suddenly bends down and hugs her tightly, pressing his cheek against her hair. “Thanks for coming over,” he mumbles, and then he’s gone.

She smiles at the space where he was standing and pulls out her phone to dial her boyfriend. “Hey,” she says when he picks up. “Barry’s wondering if you’re up to take out at his place.”

Eddie groans. “God, _yes_. This paperwork is killing me and Singh is giving me that evil eye that means he’s going to tell me to go home any minute. I’ll be there soon.”

“Great, see you then.”

Iris wanders from the bedroom to the kitchen where Barry’s shoving his phone in his pocket.

“Food’s on its way. Eddie?”

“On his way too.”

An awkward silence falls and Iris mourns for the days when they knew what to talk about, even if it was the stupidest thing in the world. She wants her best friend back. He doesn’t have to be exactly the same as before, but just a little closer would be better than _this._

“What are we doing?” she asks. He raises an eyebrow. “Barry, we’re not acting like best friends.”

“That’s my fault,” he says, stark honestly in his expression. “I know. And it doesn’t seem like I’m trying, but I am. I promise.”

Iris sighs. She believes him, she really does. The fact that she found him trying to sleep and he’s standing here in front of her waiting for food tells her everything she needs to know.

“I know you are,” she says. “But it’s still not right.”

He takes a step toward her. “Iris—”

There’s a _thud_! and the whole building rattles. She stumbles and lands in Barry’s arms, her hands tight on his bicep. She glances up to see his eyes wide in…disbelief?

“What is it?” she asks.

He can’t answer because his door _shatters_ inward, showering them with splinters. A big hulking figure stands in the doorframe, its face a grotesque mockery of a face—like someone took acid and painted fourteen faces on top of each other while trying to mimic Picasso during his weirder days.

“ _…Fllllaaaassshhh-uh_.”

Oh God, its _voice_.

“Iris.” Barry’s own voice is shaky; his body is trembling. It takes her a second but then it dawns on her—

Barry is _terrified._

“Iris,” he repeats. “Get out of here.”

There’s no where to go.

Iris steps back behind him, wishing for her gun. She’s never discharged it at someone, but right she’s really wishing she could at least have the chance to. She pulls out her phone as slowly as possible and shakily texts 9-1-1 to Eddie. He won’t get here in the next split second, but he’ll at least put on his lights and speed.

“Barry,” she asks softly, trying not to draw the attention of the creature snuffling at the door. Now that it’s said its one words it seems confused, lost. “What is that?”

His hand is splayed out in the air, like he’s trying to keep her from charging head first. “I don’t know,” he answers equally as quiet. “Something’s off.” He swallows thickly. “Whatever that thing is, something’s wrong with it.”

The creature jerks and zeroes in on Barry. “ _Yoooouuuu_.”

And then it charges.

Barry doesn’t move.

He’s standing between her and the creature, if he moves out of the way without her the creature will just barrel into her easily. So why doesn’t he take her with him?

“Barry!”

The creature grabs him by the throat and swings him around, not even paying attention to her. Barry chokes and scrabbles at its hands, but doesn’t do anything more than that to get away. Iris pushes herself against the counter in an attempt to look smaller, waiting for the moment when it’s her turn. The creature is too big, taking up too much room for her to get around to her purse, to her gun.

“Barry!” she shouts. “Fight back, _damn it_.” He doesn’t have a death wish—he _can’t_ have a death wish.

He’s slammed against the ground and he cries out over the sound of something snapping. The creature just curls over him, their faces inches from each other. Iris holds her breath, _waiting_. The hairs on the back of her next stand on end, goose-pimples raise on her arms. The air tastes of ozone and lightning crackles over Barry like it does when he runs, but _he’s not running_.

The lightning is going from Barry to the creature in one smooth movement, lighting up their faces. The clear sight of the creature’s face makes her gag. Barry starts to struggle in earnest now, something renewing his will, and he shoves against the creature’s shoulder then plants a hand against it’s face, trying to push it away.

It growls and bares down on him, something audibly _grinds_ and Barry yells a half-choked sob.

Iris fumbles for something, anything, and comes up with a steak knife. It’s small— _tiny—_ but she grips it tight anyway. The creature is so caught up in what its doing to Barry it doesn’t even notice her slowly making her way behind it. Barry sees her, though, catches her eye and tries to shake his head, but his eyes flutter and his head falls back limply, hanging there. Her heart catches as she raises the knife and hits the creature’s back straight true.

The blade bounces off.

The creature’s not even fazed.

…Did it get bigger?

It definitely got bigger.

Iris drops the knife from her slack hand and backs away, leaving room for the creature to stand and face her like any other bad guy who just got stabbed would do. —Except, it never does. It growls and hunches over Barry even more, drawing more lightning from him.

“Leave him alone,” she says weakly. Iris is pretty sure the only time she’s felt this helpless is when her mom died, her best friend was in a coma, and the love-of-her-life had been kidnapped by a sociopath.

God, what the hell is her life?

“ _Iris? Barry?”_

She lurches at the sound of Eddie’s voice. “Eddie!” At this point she can tell the creature wants nothing to do with her. “Eddie!”

Eddie appears at the shattered door, blue eyes wide and gun ready. He takes in the situation with only a blink before he’s aiming his gun at the creature. “Iris, _move.”_ She dives down and over behind an outcropped wall, covering her ears as Eddie opens fire.

The creature _howls_ and the room shakes. Iris peers around the corner to see Eddie scrambling out of the way when the creature takes a swipe at him. When it misses it takes off out of the apartment at a run, the whole building trembling.

Leaving Barry in the middle of the living room, groaning. Eddie looks from him to Iris, jaw dropped.

“What the _fuck_?”

Iris’ answer is more of inarticulate sounds than words. Both of them are distracted by Barry moaning and curling up on his side into a ball too small for such a tall man, his hands in his hair.

“Call Caitlin,” Iris orders. Eddie complies as she crawls over to Barry, her heart in her throat. “Barry, can you hear me?— _Barry_?”

[…]

“It’s because of Barry’s energy levels,” Caitlin says then bites her lip. Eddie kind of just wants her to keep talking, not hesitate, but at this point, as long as he gets answers, she can take as many pauses as she wants.

Barry still hasn’t gained full consciousness in the three hours since that _creature_ ran out of the building. He’s in a state of awake and not, his eyes half-lidded and his fingers twitching, his mouth forming silent words. Eddie saw Barry in a coma and this is _worse._

Eddie kind of just wants the universe to leave Barry alone, leave _all_ of them alone.

“We’ve already established the metahuman is going after other metahumans, but not the ones that are naturally occurring,” she continues.

“Hold on,” Joe says. “This has not been established to me.”

Caitlin takes a deep breath like she’s fortifying herself. “The second look I did of your victims revealed that they were metahumans affected by the particle accelerator. They did not have the metagene, all of their powers were coming from the energy absorbed when the accelerator blew. It’s kind of like Barry, except his DNA was rewritten as a result, these people just had excess energy.” She taps her tablet nervously. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have energy. Eobard Thawne mentioned the Speed Force and, recently, Cisco, Barry, and I have been looking into it. We don’t have much so far, except Barry’s energy levels when he’s using his speed is off the charts and there’s always a way to access it when he’s not running.”

“So, you’re saying this guy is an energy vampire?” Cisco pipes, bouncing on his heels. “We finally have a vampire!”

“Farooq,” Iris reminds him. “He took people’s energy. He took Barry’s speed.”

“He was taking their electrical energy, wasn’t he?” Linda asks. She wasn’t here for that metahuman. Even though Iris and Eddie were out of them loop for the Flash part of it, they remember the Clock King clearly. Eddie swears his shoulder throbs in memory. “He could do that to anybody. This guy is only going after other metahumans.”

With Barry out of commission for who knows how long while he replenishes his energy there’s only one person—

“Hey, Bette’s on leave in Keystone right now, isn’t she?” Eddie asks, though he already knows the answer “Her bombs come from absorbed energy from the accelerator, but she has an unusually high amount, right? Now that we know, we can use her as bait. She’d be more than happy to.”

Cisco’s expression twists up in something Eddie can’t recognize immediately. “I’ll call her. It’ll take her two hours to get here if she agrees.”

“What was with the face?” Ronnie asks.

“What face?”

Linda snorts. “The face that looks like you sucked on a lemon and smelled something bad at the same time.”

He waves a hand dismissively. “I just can’t come up with a name, not a big deal.”

Eddie narrows his eyes—Cisco’s lying. Why?

The question is left unasked and unanswered. Cisco turns away to dial EOD specialist Sergeant Bette Sans Souci, Linda following him and prodding him to put it on speaker. Caitlin and Ronnie duck their heads together to go over some of the data he’d retrieved over seas. Iris refuses to leave Barry’s side and the only time Eddie’s stopped gripping Barry’s wrist is smooth his hair back in restless nerves.

Joe sighs. “Are we sure this is the metahuman who killed these people?”

“Yes,” Caitlin says. “I am absolutely positive.”

“All right. I guess I’m heading to the station to update Singh.” He shrugs on his jacket. “I’m going to be a very happy man when Barry finally decides on his replacement. We need to get started on that department with how many metahumans are popping up out of the woodwork.”

Iris raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean ‘finally?’”

“No one told you?” Joe rolls his eyes. “The _only_ reason the anti-metahuman department hasn’t officially been launched is because their lead director in forensics and powers is still working as a CSI. He hasn’t decided on a replacement yet. We’ve got over thirty people on payroll already—including our ragtag STAR Labs crew, you, and Eddie—and the equipment. We just don’t have _him._ And Singh refuses to sign off on the official announcement until then.”

“Of fucking course.”

Eddie gives her a small smile that she returns before she looks down at Barry with a fond expression. She cards her fingers through Barry’s hair.

“I’m going to send a unit over to pick up Clive and Cleo Yorkin,” Joe adds. “I know the metahuman you saw looked nothing like either of them, but there’s too much of a connection to leave them be.” He glances at Barry. “Let me know when he wakes up.”

Eddie watches him go before slouching in his chair, sighing. “I’m getting tired of seeing him in a hospital bed.”

“Tell me about it.” She jerks her chin to where Eddie has his hand wrapped around Barry’s wrist, his thumb pressed against the speedster’s pulse point. The heart monitor is keeping track, but there’s something soothing about feeling Barry’s heart beat. “We should actually talk about this instead of it being implied.”

“I know. I just don’t want to scare him away.” He hesitates for a second, feeling a curl of guilt in his chest even though what he’s about to say is perfectly reasonable. “I also don’t know how I feel attempting to approach a relationship with someone who’s in such a bad place. It wouldn’t healthy for any of us. While he’s not directly lying to us, he won’t tell us what happened during the Singularity Event. He’s the only one who knows what happened to Eobard and he’s the only one who knows why he seems to think holding onto so much guilt even though nothing happened is a good idea. That’s not the makings for a happy, healthy, stable relationship.”

Iris groans and drops her head on the thin mattress. “I know,” she says, words slightly muffled. “I know. We’re getting closer to being normal, but we’ve got ways to go.” She glances up at him through her eyelashes. “Have I mentioned how much I love you?”

He chuckles. “Once or twice. It never hurts a guy to hear it more often, though.”

She smiles fully at him, all teeth and eye crinkles. “I love you.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I love you too, or this would be awkward.”

[…]

“Screw you! You fucked everything up.”

“Dad wouldn’t—.”

“Dad’s not fucking here. Ugh! Everything! Everything, _you_ screwed up.”

“Now, come on guys, is that really any way to talk?”

“Who are you? What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry. I’m here to help.”

[…]

A call from Cisco Ramon asking for help with a metahuman case is definitely something Bette hadn’t been expecting. Ever since Team Flash helped her get away from Eiling and the Army they’ve kept in touch, but she’s seen them only about three times since then, most recently enough to meet their newest members, but she never got back in time to help with the Singularity.

Not that a living bomb could do much for that.

Nathaniel groans and presses his face against her stomach. “Where are you goin’?” he asks, grumbling.

She chuckles. “Central City. Something happened to Barry and they need my help. I don’t know when I’ll be done, can you let Lyla know why I missed the meeting when it comes to that?”

“Yeah, yeah. Go, be a superhero.”

“You act like you’ve got nothing,” she teases as she untangles herself from his octopus arms. He just snores deliberately in response. She flicks him in the ear and he whines pathetically as she rushes to get ready for the day and pack a go-bag.

How Cisco describe Barry painted a not-so-pretty picture of the speedster and she’s not really looking forward to seeing it. Barry has been a pretty good friend over the last year or so, distant because of the jobs she takes for ARGUS and the line of work both of them are in, but a good friend. All of them have been and she will always be grateful of Barry’s quick reflexes for spotting the gun Eiling had pointed her way and getting her out of there. Then, of course, their wonderful connection to ARGUS and ARGUS’ connection to the government to get Eiling blacklisted.

She kind of wonders what happened to him after the President of the United States of America herself made him pack his bags and gave him a dishonorable discharge.

She’s incredibly lucky.

Bette passes by the bed and kisses Nathaniel one more time before leaving. She straps her bag to the back of her motorcycle and clips on her helmet. It’ll take her an hour and forty-five minutes to get to STAR Labs, and that’s if traffic is favorable and cops ignore the fact that she’s speeding. Her ARGUS badge is good for getting her out of tight situations, but it doesn’t always work on cops.

There’s still damage from the Singularity Event in towns between Keystone and Central, the unknown black hole’s influence far reaching. The fact there were any deaths or life threatening injuries is still a miracle. She sees signs of rebuilding, though, the logo of Palmer Tech and Queen Industries—they had not yet merged their logos and there’s rumors Ray Palmer wants to keep hem separate for marketing and specialties—are on several construction sites, even Wayne Industries seems to be pitching in even though they’re on the other side of the country.

Give it another year and it’ll seem like nothing ever happened.

She stops once to grab a disgusting (oh-so-good) fast food breakfast and makes it to Central City in record time. Bette has to call Cisco to let him into STAR Labs since she hasn’t officially been given a pass to get through their security, they’ve added so much to is since the last time she was here, she’s kind of impressed.

“Bette!” Linda cries when she sees her. “You got here faster than I thought.”

She laughs as she hugs the other woman. “Maybe I secretly have super-speed, hmm?” The gets a laugh from the group, except from Barry. Her gaze drifts over to him and her heart clenches to see the state of him—he looks catatonic. “Oh, Barry,” she breathes.

“Yeah, doesn’t look so good, does it?” Iris says, a sardonic tilt to her smile. Bette blinks, just now realizing Iris and Eddie clustered around Barry like they’d have to be pried away with a crowbar and even that might not work.

“What can I do?” she asks. “How can I help? You said something about using me as bait?”

She’s ushered to the main desk of the Cortex with each monitor set up to show the medical records of eleven people and two more records of a Clive and Cleo Yorkin. The larger monitor has body scans of her and Barry side by side. Barry’s scan _glows_ brighter than hers, but she’s no slouch in that department.

“The metahuman we’re after is attacking people with high energy outputs and draining them,” Caitlin informs her. “After Barry, you’re the next highest who’s closest. We could use Ronnie, but he only has a high enough energy when he and Professor Stein are fused, and Professor Stein is in Starling City.”

Bette raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t it called Star City now?”

“Two days,” Ronnie pipes up with. “That’s when the official announcement is.”

“Oh, right.”

She takes a deep breath. “Okay. How are we going to do this?”

Everything after that is a bit of a blur, the only thing that stand out are two things:

  1.      the plan—Clive and Cleo are going to be released from police custody since there is no actual evidence other than coincidence and then Bette is going to the ICU at Central City Hospital to ‘visit’ some friends and hope the person/creature will follow her and attack her where Cisco will be waiting with something to trap it.
  2.      and Barry arching up, gasping, his eyes a bright white. He clutches at the sheets under him, his body twisting and jerking.



“What’s happening?” Iris yells, backing away from flailing limbs.

Caitlin doesn’t answer him. “He’s not seizing, hold him down, Ronnie, Eddie. He’s going to hurt himself.” Her tone is even, her expression determined. Ronnie goes for Barry’s legs, pressing down just below his knees, Eddie doesn’t move. “Eddie!” she barks. The blonde detective rushes to hold on to Barry’s shoulders. Caitlin flutters around Barry, checking the monitors, and finally falls back. “It’s nothing.”

“That’s not nothing,” Cisco shouts. “Look at him.”

“There’s nothing we can do, his energy levels are increasing—that’s what’s causing this,” Caitlin snaps. “I can’t do anything to help him, this is all him and the Speed Force.” She runs a hand almost angrily through her hair. “We need to get that metahuman. It might come after Barry again and I don’t know if his body can take it for a second time.”

_Or his mind_ , Bette thinks, watching one of her best friends writhe on the bed.

“Okay, let’s get started,” she says, doing her best to ignore the gasping sounds come from Barry.

[…]

The plan is pretty simple.

Cisco should’ve learned a long time ago that their simple plans never actually pan out that way.

Yes, Bette gets to the ICU no problem, and she leaves the ICU no problem an hour later, but it’s when she runs into the Yorkin siblings out on the street do things actually start to go wrong.

They walk by her without even a glance, but Cisco whispers in the comm. piece for Bette to infuse something with energy and make it explode. She picks up a piece of paper flying in the wind, her eyebrows furrow, and the paper starts to glow purple for a few seconds. She lets go and it drops like a rock before there’s a soft sound of an explosion.

Cleo Yorkin whips around, her eyes narrowed and her fingers curling like they’re claws. Bette faces her, smirking, her hand already clutching another piece of paper.

“Hey, lady, whatcha gonna do?”

Cleo tries to lunge for her, but Clive holds her back with a tight grip on her elbow. Cisco shuffles a little closer to them, Ronnie on the other side, Eddie just outside the hospital doors with his gun. He prays that the device he has will hold onto the creature, but now he’s getting the uneasy feeling that he’s totally wrong about this.

This isn’t going to work.

“Who are you?” Clive asks, voice low and dangerous. “You’re a metahuman—we’ll call the cops!”

“Do you really want to do that?” Bette says. The second paper explodes. “Are you really sure? How ‘bout you just take care of me yourself? I’m sure you can handle it.”

There’s a pause and then Cisco has to blink to make sure he’s seeing this right. The point of contact between Clive and Cleo is…glowing? It’s glowing a light, almost white, blue that’s almost blinding. When he blinks again Clive’s hand is melted to Cleo’s elbow, slowly going to his wrist. ‘ _What the fuck_?’ he hears Eddie whisper over the comm.

_Whump!_ And they’ve fused together into a great hulking, _ugly_ creature that Eddie shakily confirms over the comm. to be the one who attacked Barry.

It doesn’t immediately attack, though. It stumbles, staggering, hands in it hair, shaking its head. It mumbles under its breath and Cisco can’t hear it but…but the vibrations make the hair on the back of his neck stand up—he normally only gets that feeling when Barry’s tapping into the Speed Force.

Is this a new addition to his unknown powers or is this a result of the Yorkins stealing some of the Speed Force?

—will this make them faster?

God, he _so_ hopes not.

The Yorkins stop stumbling around and affix their eyes on Bette. “ _Plaaaasssstiiiique-uh_ …” they hiss, their voice sounding like too many people talking at one. “Nooooo—.”

“How the hell do they know her codename?” Ronnie hisses.

Cisco seems him stepping closer and he wills himself not to tell him to stop. He tightens his grip on the force field generator and prays to a God he has a wobbly belief in right now that it works.

The Yorkins amble closer, but Bette stands her ground, a pencil clutched tightly in her hand and her stance braced for a charge.

“You—.” The Yorkins pant for breath. “You. Dead.”

Cisco freezes where he stands, heart pounding so fast it could match up with Barry. So that…that timeline is real? Bette really died like that in a timeline—shot by Eiling and dropped in the ocean to explode without hurting anyone? Barry hadn’t been fast enough? His legs shake, his knees buckle.

No, no. What happened? What made it change?—he’s not complaining of course, he loves that Bette is, you know, _not_ dead. But, the Singularity? Yeah, he’s been getting flashes of a different timeline, but he thought that was the timeline Barry originally (“Cisco.”) messed with. How did he not realize the Singularity—caused by Barry going back in time and who knows what—could’ve changed _something._

(“Cisco!”)

And Bette Sans Souci’s death can’t be the only thing rewritten.

_Holy shit._

“—amn it! _Cisco_!”

He jerks, startled, just in time to see the Yorkins take a swipe at Bette. She skillfully dodges out of the way, throwing her now charged pencil at their face. It pops in their eyes and the Yorkins yowl in pain. Cisco squares his shoulders and leaps out of his hiding place, brandishing his generator. Eddie opens fire at their back, distracting them, Ronnie pops out with the second generator.

“Move, Bette!”

Cisco pulls the trigger and the accompanying vibration sends his teeth rattling. The force field radiates out from their guns, from either side of the Yorkins, and encases them in the blue, shimmering field. The Yorkins scream and yell, dropping to their knees and shuddering in pain. In a blink he can see their head starting to split into two, a disgusting squishing noise following.

“Ew,” Bette says.

Cisco takes a deep breath and wills the vibrations of the force field to get ever-so-slightly stronger, hoping that it’s the vibrations causing them to split. The Yorkins howl like a wild animal, but Cisco can start to make out distinct features belonging to Clive and Cleo.

Lightning stretches between then, white and yellow—like Barry’s—and it take five minutes for them to separate fully. Luckily by that time there aren’t any bystanders to see how gross it is, the anti-metahuman department that isn’t officially suppose to be active/doing anything cleared everyone out.

Bette comes up to stand next to him, her eyes wide at the sight of the two Yorkins. “We did it,” she says, relieved. “Thank God, that was horrifying.”

Ronnie rubs a hand over his mouth, looking pale. “I never want to see something that gross again. Ever. Never ever. If I do, I’m having Barry go back in time and take me away before it happens.”

“Okay, that’s pushing it,” Eddie says. “Let’s call some of the people who aren’t technically here and get them cuffed. There’s some questions that still need to be answered before we send them to Lian Yu.”

[…]

David Singh does his very best not to sigh. He’s the one that decided to go for Police Captain. He looks up at their resident metahuman and holds back the grin at how nervous the man looks. He’s known Barry Allen for a good fifteen years now, back when he wasn’t a police captain and Barry was a traumatized eleven year old who was convinced a ball of lightning killed his mom—oh how things have changed.

“Their dad is a metahuman too?” he asks again, just to make sure he’s hearing this right.

“Right,” Barry says. “A naturally occurring one with a metagene and everything. Only Clive has the gene, Cleo was at the Central City Hospital when the Particle Accelerator exploded. Clive was triggered by his sister and they learned they could only drain energy when they were, well, _one._ Of course, we only have their word for it. There’s no father listed anywhere and DNA tests were negative, he’s not in the system. Hopefully, keeping them on Lian Yu with ARGUS will keep him from coming here looking for his children. _”_

“Our lives keep getting weirder and weirder.” David drags a hand down his face before subtly pushing a container of cookies Rob’s mom made closer to Barry. In public it may seem like he hates the kid, but that’s far from the truth. Barry has this way of getting under the skin until you can’t help but want to do whatever you can to help him and right now Barry looks more like skin and bones than anything else. “You okay?”

Barry nods and finally takes a seat, slouching deep. “My speed never went away, the Speed Force in me just couldn’t keep up with how fast they were draining it and basically put me in hibernation mode to keep me from dying while I got it back.”

“That’s not going to be a common thing, is it?”

He shakes his head. “We’re pretty sure the answer’s no. It happens once and it should never happen again. The Speed Force has learned its lesson.”

David frowns. “You talk like it has a mind of its own.”

Barry gets this faraway look in his eyes. “Sometimes I wonder,” he mumbles. He shakes his head again, like a dog getting water out of his eats. “You’ll be happy to know I found my replacement.”

“Oh?” Fucking finally, excuse the language.

He laughs, like he could read David’s mind. “I’ve been busy, you know that.”

True, he does—but come on! David eyes him silently. Barry looks better than he has in months and he wonders who he has to thank for that, definitely not Barry himself.

“Who is it?”

Barry slides a file towards him. “Patty Spivot. She triple majored in three different science courses at UCLA and her essay to even get into the school was amazing. Her dad was killed by Mark Mardon before he became the Weather Wizard so she’s got the motivation. I’m putting my official request to make her the department liaison. In a year, with a little bit more experience, I want her working for the anti-metahuman department.”

“Of course you do.” David smirks. “And you’re going to make her look for her own replacement?”

Barry snorts. “Of course not. You will.” He gives him a cheeky grin.

David types out Patty Spivot’s name into the department’s payroll and files her background check. Before he’d given Barry any names for possible replacements he’d background checks running on them. He’ll give Patty a call in a few hours when it’s not six o’clock in the morning and have her come in to fill out her paperwork. By the time Flash Day comes around she’ll be running the stations CSI division like she was born to, especially with Barry showing her a few tricks before he’s officially promoted.

Speaking of—

“Just to let you know, I better see you at Flash Day,” David says sternly. Barry raises an eyebrow. “Every day it’s going. And you better be there with the mask on when you’re set to be on stage.”

Barry slouches even farther into his seat, his eyes shifting away. “I don’t know, Singh,  I—.”

“When I told you that I knew you were the Flash,” David says, cutting him off. “I didn’t do it to blackmail you into anything. The fact that you’re the Flash is only a little of the reason I’m giving you an entire part of a new department to you, the rest is your skills. But you’re a hero to this city and they want to honor you. I’m sure everyone else has been telling you the same exact thing. I want to see you get honored.”

He shifts awkwardly in his seat. “I’ve gotta go.”

David sighs. “Take the cookies with you. Rob wouldn’t mind if the container disappeared. His mom gave it to him and he hates it.”

Barry lets out a small laugh and disappears in a blink, the container gone with him. David smiles at the empty spot for a second, then frowns. He’s going to have to call Lyla about this, she might have someone Barry can talk to, someone at a professional level and in the know of superpowers and their heroes.

[…]

Barry tacks on another paper to his corkboard and steps back to get the whole picture, ignoring the most recent postcard from Felicity. He knows she means well, but seeing those rolling hill his mother loved so much still hurts. The new paper is a list of the people he knows who have a metagene and who doesn’t, those who have powers and those who don’t. It’s a small list, but looking at the articles from around the world tells him it’s going to get longer.

He runs a hand through his hair, frowning at the way it shakes, and goes to his tiny kitchen to rummage around in the cabinets and fridge. All the pops up is a dinner he has to make last for two more days until he gets paid and three apples. He grabs the apple and crunches into it. He grimaces at the mealy taste, but keeps on eating it, unable to waste it.

STAR Labs does not have enough money to pay for his eating habits, and he definitely doesn’t have enough money to pay for his eating habits. God, this _sucks_. What he wouldn’t do for one of Cisco’s calorie bars right now, but Cisco has the funds to only make so much and with the way Barry’s been running he’ll need more than what Cisco can provide and he doesn’t want to put his friend on the streets because Cisco’s such a good person he would literally feed Barry until he couldn’t any more.

The new position of Director of Forensics should put a bump in his pay, but he wonders how long he’s going to last like this.

He sighs and leans against the counter, munching on his apple, staring at the skyline of the city he almost destroyed. He blinks, frowns, and then narrows his eyes at the spark of blue he sees in the distance.

The same blue as the Singularity.

— _No_.

But then it _moves_ like lightning and Barry’s after it in a split second, but as fast as he moves, by the time he gets to that point, it’s gone.

_What the fuck_?

 

**Author's Note:**

> Next up!  
> Flash Appreciation Day


End file.
